More Meade Madness

[great_bear]

I mentioned in a recent post <here> that I got my brother in the USA to pick me up a Meade 24mm SWA at a real bargain price (£55 as opposed to e.g. £240 from Widescreen Centre)

These prices (which for some reason either UK retailers are not passing on, or they don't have access to) are still available in some quarters in the USA. Deals so good in fact that even if you get hammered by UK customs for import duty you'll still save a small fortune.

For example, check out the Meade SWA prices on this page <here>

An amusing side-effect of these discounts, is that their Meade SWA Eyepiece Kit ends up as startlingly bad value compared to buying the eyepieces separately on that same page.

[russ]

The 28mm and 34mm really stand out as excellent value. Excellent if you know someone in the US or going to the US. Shame the UK dealers aren't getting the chance to offer these discounts. But as you say, you'd have to be off your trolley to buy from the UK, even taking the tax into account. All though the only fly in the oitment would be there choice of courier....UPS. Rip off merchents on a big scale. They charged me an £18 handling fee on an item that cost £23 delivered. Which means you'll be looking at a total of possibly close to £150 ($99 + $40 del + £38 tax/import + £18 handling) delivered for a $99 eyepiece. But seeing the UK price is £249....who cares.

[lukebl]

Presumably you get stung by huge import duty if you try and buy these?

[russ]

21% of the total purchase price including delivery.